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Ok this I have noticed a lot in certainother threads and quite honestly, it is getting old.
Honestly, it just sounds elitist for no reason. AD&D is nothing like PF...
What do ypu guys think Of this?
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Dang nabbit! Get off my lawn an take yer Damn Outer Dragon with you!
Back in my day it cost two rubies ta raise ya, and if'n you's got Disintegrated, you stayed Disintegrated!
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Experience usually does lend to better knowledge about a game. This tends to break down when the game you have experience in is almost nothing like the game you claim to have knowledge of.
I think the breakdown in the logic is that knowledge of gaming doesn't always equal knowledge of -this game-. But sometimes it does.
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There are aspects of AD&D that can be adapted into Pathfinder though house rules and different playstyles—minimal treasure, more "instant death" traps, scaling up poison, that sort of thing. You can combine the two, to some extent. That said, it's otherwise like comparing 4E and Mouse Guard. Vague "genric" similarities like "they're both medieval fantasy" do not make them apples and apples—one system to another will always be wholly different fruits.
And besides, there's nothing smarter or cleverer about low-magic or gritty fantasy over high fantasy or cheerful adventure, nor is there anything superior about a game that is more "hardcore"—hardcore games have their own major weaknesses, particularly when it comes to character arcs and realism (I once played in an AD&D game in a dangerous forest where PCs were dying so fast, we literally just started making introductions like "A druid falls out of a nearby tree"). They're just different types of stories.
Being a "veteran" is cool, but all it means is you've had more time to get good at the ways you've played—which can, in my experience, mean you've gotten very good at very wrong ways (and I use "wrong" in a loose sense, of course). A lot of those "killer" GMs who think the game is players vs. GM are "veterans" who missed the whole point of first edition.
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Experience usually does lend to better knowledge about a game. This tends to break down when the game you have experience in is almost nothing like the game you claim to have knowledge of.
As such, experience with any game prior to 3.0 doesn't really contribute anything to your Pathfinder knowledge.
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I think generalization is a problem. About players. I've played D&D since 1974. Every version except 4E (I read it and decided to stick with 3.5), and, of course, Pathfinder. Among many other games. I manage to talk about it without, I think, being too annoying. There are grumpy, argumentative, dogmatic players of every age, play style and level of experience around here. Still not as many as on other sites I know.
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I don't really know what it is: "I've been playing a long time, so my opinion is likely to be right" (?)
I view it the other way - earlier editions of D&D required a lot more interpretation and had less legislation, so when a grognard is caught in a dispute about the rules of PF with a newer player, I suspect the young guy is likely to be right. (I'm very sure I forget all kinds of rules when I play pathfinder).
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OP, your question is kind of vague. WHAT exactly have you noticed in other threads that annoys you?
Is it just when somebody says they've been playing D&D for 4 decades? Is that annoying? Or is somebody claiming that having done so makes them better than you?
Frankly, I haven't ever seen anyone claiming to be a long-time gamer who annoyed me by telling me as much - he may or may not be annoying for other reasons, but just saying he's gamed forever is not, in itself, annoying to me, so I guess I just really don't understand your question.
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Experience usually does lend to better knowledge about a game. This tends to break down when the game you have experience in is almost nothing like the game you claim to have knowledge of.As such, experience with any game prior to 3.0 doesn't really contribute anything to your Pathfinder knowledge.
I have to assume you mean the mechanics of the game right?
Because experience with ANY kind of RPG from GURPS to D&D to Champions to Call of Cthulhu ( ;) ) will give plenty of knowledge about roleplaying for Pathfinder.
But I agree that just because I have played all kinds of games since the 80's does not mean I can GM Pathfinder.
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OP, your question is kind of vague. WHAT exactly have you noticed in other threads that annoys you?
Is it just when somebody says they've been playing D&D for 4 decades? Is that annoying? Or is somebody claiming that having done so makes them better than you?
Frankly, I haven't ever seen anyone claiming to be a long-time gamer who annoyed me by telling me as much - he may or may not be annoying for other reasons, but just saying he's gamed forever is not, in itself, annoying to me, so I guess I just really don't understand your question.
Well its mostly people using their time playing as a justification.for their argument. Things like "well ihave been playing for 30 years and i have never seen that" or "in my experiance of 30 years, youbare doing it wrong. Ect"
I think generalization is a problem. About players. I've played D&D since 1974. Every version except 4E (I read it and decided to stick with 3.5), and, of course, Pathfinder. Among many other games. I manage to talk about it without, I think, being too annoying. There are grumpy, argumentative, dogmatic players of every age, play style and level of experience around here. Still not as many as on other sites I know.
Pretty much this. I try not to mention how long I've played, although it has come up now and then. It's a part of me, like being right handed or having watched certain movies or having grown up in places. It means as much or as little as any of the rest of that. It gives a certain level of experience, brought on no doubt by age as well, but it doesn't invalidate anyone else's experience or age.
It's as much justification I suppose as anything else people can use as a measuring stick for the opinions. I'm not sure what else you'd suggest?
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If there's one thing that every generation has in common, it's the disdain of the generation that came before them.
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If there's one thing that every generation has in common, it's the disdain of the generation that came before them.
After. You mean the generation after.
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If there's one thing that every generation has in common, it's the disdain of the generation that came before them.After. You mean the generation after.
Well, that too ^_^
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Yea i mean... Im only 22. Some people have been playing D&D for longer than I have been alive. But I hate when my age seems to invalidate me because some old fart played first edition.
Yea i mean... Im only 22. Some people have been playing D&D for longer than I have been alive. But I hate when my age seems to invalidate me because some old fart played first edition.
Don't feel bad, I'm 37 and R_Chance has been playing since before I was born...it doesn't mean anything.
There are certain tendencies among grognards...mostly nostalgia seeking type things...trying to recapture the "feel" of old school gaming etc..Older players seem much more willing to houserule too...probably from having had to in the past due to systems being really incomplete. I'm guilty of this...I'm all over rule zero and will go so far as to rewrite whole systems.
There's also resistance to change evinced by some who bemoan the neverending bloat etc..
i don't really think there's anything that can be done about it...it's just a quirk of this domain of nerd-dom.
Yea i mean... Im only 22. Some people have been playing D&D for longer than I have been alive. But I hate when my age seems to invalidate me because some old fart played first edition.
You missed my point (? or not?). My point was that young / old doesn't matter that much. Experience is useful for some things but knowledge is not limited to old farts like me. My problem is with any group being categorized as annoying / grumpy / etc. That's why I brought up my experience. I don't make it a habit of annoying people, bringing up arguments about the "good old days" or "the one true way to play". Despite my age / experience :) My experience is that there are annoying people in every group. Young. Old. In between. That's just people. You need to learn to let that go. No use being annoyed by certain people. Easier said than done, I know.
Besides, us *real* old farts started with the original D&D game... 1E is for youngsters :)
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You missed my point (? or not?). My point was that young / old doesn't matter that much. Experience is useful for some things but knowledge is not limited to old farts like me. My problem is with any group being categorized as annoying / grumpy / etc. That's why I brought up my experience. I don't make it a habit of annoying people, bringing up arguments about the "good old days" or "the one true way to play". Despite my age / experience :) My experience is that there are annoying people in every group. Young. Old. In between. That's just people. You need to learn to let that go. No use being annoyed by certain people. Easier said than done, I know.
Besides, us *real* old farts started with the original D&D game... 1E is for youngsters :)
But you miss the other point. The OP is NOT talking about folk like you, he/she is talking about those who DO come with the attitude. Like this:
I find accusations of "elitism" more annoying, frankly - it just seems like a blanket excuse for dragging others down to one's own level rather than aspiring to better oneself.
I mean really...
On a more temperate note
The truth is us old timers have played so many games with so many rulesets that we are bound to end up confused about any number of nuances. Another truth is we generally find rule lawyers annoying. Unless me rolling 6d4 instead of 4d6 resulted in your characters demise...just go with it. Game time is not look it up time.
And yes we appeal to the authority of rule zero over all other rules.
Elitism? Heck no we just like to play and sometimes our fun is labeled bad-wrong fun.
I ran a KM game and the mancer hated I gave a villian accelerated drinker trait so that after he impaired her she gritted her teeth and took an axe to him before she died. He hated it and made up at least three reasons that was impossible.....I didn't like any of them.
I get that, but most of us who started playing with 3.0 or later iterations and especially if we play just d20, we expect everyone, especially the DM to know the rules, and make characters that are going to be effective in certain situations, a don't want to depend on the DMs mood and current brain ability to do so. It IS a bit player entitlement vs. GM entitlement, but I don't find either wrong, just that everyone acknowledge that they are different likes and expectations.
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Another truth is we generally find rule lawyers annoying. Unless me rolling 6d4 instead of 4d6 resulted in your characters demise...just go with it. Game time is not look it up time.
1. Then get the rules right or let people know up front that you play loosely with the rules.
2. Some of us don't have to look the rules up to know you are wrong, and "just go with it" is terrible general advice for enough reasons that I am sure you can think of some without me having to list any.
Besides, us *real* old farts started with the original D&D game... 1E is for youngsters :)
Yep, and none of that newfangled "Keep on the Borderlands" stuff either. "In Search of the Unknown" was the proper way to start adventuring. ;)
knowing the rules is crucial...the fast and loose days are over. I make it a point to know the rules better than my players.
The magic tea party is over...there's a rule for almost everything now.The good part of that is no longer having to just make alot of s#!t up on the fly.
You've got to like to study, read and theorycraft in order to be fluent enough to arbitrate by the rules without having to look stuff up mid-game.
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knowing the rules is crucial...Meh. I don't find that to be so.
Nah, it's better to just decide on a case by case basis what you want the outcome to be :D
The truth is us old timers have played so many games with so many rulesets that we are bound to end up confused about any number of nuances. Another truth is we generally find rule lawyers annoying. Unless me rolling 6d4 instead of 4d6 resulted in your characters demise...just go with it. Game time is not look it up time.
I guess I'm the other kind of grognard. Just like you, I played D&D before 1st edition existed.
And yet, MY "truth" is that I AM a rules lawyer (and I'm sure this whole forum finds me annoying, so you got that part right). My "truth" is that I'm not confused about the Pathfinder rules - I have never once asked a Pathfinder player what his Thac0 is, or what his Bend Bars/Lift Gates percentage is, or what his Saving Throw vs. Rods, Staves, and Wands is, and I darn sure know that the biggest dragon in the Pathfinder Bestiary has more than 88 HP.
At the game table, when I GM, I try to get every rule right. Sometimes I miss one and a player points it out; I accept that, learn it, and move on and try not to make that same mistake again. Over time, I've getting pretty good at getting most rules right. When I play, I let the GM do his own thing unless he's very wrong, then I speak up, nicely and politely - but if it's only a minor thing, I ignore it. No point irritating the table over trivia.
So maybe we're not too dissimilar, even if we each have our own "truths" - but if you roll 6d4 (average 15 and you are immune to getting a result of 4 or 5) when you should roll 4d6 (average 14 with a very small chance of getting a result of 4 or 5), I would speak up - after your turn is done and when the next guy is taking his turn so I don't interrupt the flow of play.
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Yea i mean... Im only 22. Some people have been playing D&D for longer than I have been alive. But I hate when my age seems to invalidate me because some old fart played first edition.
I don't think your age invalidates you or makes them some sort of game saint.
Listen, I've been driving longer than you've been alive. That doesn't mean I am a better driver. It means I've been driving longer than you've been alive. That's it. If you ask me about certain things about driving, like bad weather or what-ifs, I can speak with a certain amount of experience regarding what I've seen and done. But I am not a font of all knowledge regarding automobiles.
The same goes with any of this. There are people that have been playing longer than I have that have almost no clue about the game, and those that have been playing a short amount of time that are rules marvels.
Don't let someone else's experience color your perceptions of your own. If they have been playing for 40 years, that means they have been alive a while and yes, they may have a few more stories under their belt than you. But that doesn't make them better than you.
And the same goes the other way. They may be "old farts" since you are a young whippersnapper, but that doesn't mean all their experiences are invalid since they didn't grow up on a steady diet of computer games and digimon or whatever it is that people do these days. ;)
So this has been in my profile for years now:
Someone once asked, "Why do people post how long they've been playing RPGs? What am I supposed to take away from that?" I thought about it, and decided on a couple of answers:
1) They just want to give an idea of their experience.
2) They believe that because they have been playing for so long, they are right.
3) They want to counter #2.
I've been gaming since 1990. I say this for reasons #1 and #3. Please don't try to pretend that just because you've been playing a long time it means you are better than someone else.
The reason people list how long they have played or what their experience is because there is literally no other metric in which to measure someones ability or knowledge of the game. You can say all you want that you know every rule, but on a forum that means nothing since you have all the time you want to look up rules. When trying to decide between to opinions who would you rather listen to, the guy who has stayed with the game for over 5 editions of the game or the one who thinks that they can "fix" Pathfinder after playing it for a few years.
How about you listen to the opinions and judge for yourself which one holds more merit based on their individual upsides and downsides.
Besides, the more experienced guy should be able to justify their position a lot better than the new guy. If they can't, then that is a really bad sign.
The reason people list how long they have played or what their experience is because there is literally no other metric in which to measure someones ability or knowledge of the game. You can say all you want that you know every rule, but on a forum that means nothing since you have all the time you want to look up rules. When trying to decide between to opinions who would you rather listen to, the guy who has stayed with the game for over 5 editions of the game or the one who thinks that they can "fix" Pathfinder after playing it for a few years.
For rules knowledge I'll take guy #2 every single time.
It has been my (purely anecdotal) experience that the follow relationship exists:
(Number of years playing tabletop RPGs) Is inversely proportional to the (% liklihood you have read the pathfinder CRB)
That is to say (again in my experience) that most old timers tend to believe their rules knowledge is such that they can "wing-it" and only keep a CRB for reference. Whereas a new player who has "only" been around for a few years AND has identified that the breaks in the system of significant enough that they need to be fixed has an extremely high chance of having read the CRB; both because it is the only rules document he has ever played under AND he is knowledgeable about its issues.
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I've been saying this since I was in Jr ROTC in high school; in 20 years across military, government, private sector, and academia, I've yet to see it proven false.
"Age, time in service, and rank do not determine maturity, intellect, or competence."
Just because you've done something for a long time and/or are in a position of power does not make what you say correct. I've met high schoolers who have been more mature and competent than folks in their 60s.
To me, how long you've been playing RPGs has much less significance than what you say and how you act. I've met gamers much younger than me who have shown me to be wrong in very mature ways, and I've had gamers older than me throw temper tantrums because I dared to use math to show them that their argument was wrong and dared to question their authority. I've aso seen very immature younger gamers and very mature older gamers. It's all on the individual, and I have to judge each individual on their own merits rather than trust any blanket statement. It's as true in gaming as it is in every other field I've been involved in.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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I guess I'm one of the "older" players - I started playing with BECMI and 1e. But an argument from authority is a bad argument no matter who's making it. If an argument has validity then it is good on its own merits, not because of who is saying it. I'd never presume that my years of playing are an "I win" button, and in fact they are really only relevant in two situations that I can think of:
If someone is making a post specifically about an older edition and a historical fact would be useful - even then I would turn more to the library of 1e/2e books I have to do a direct lookup.
If there is a question about RAI about a game rule that has a long history, sometimes the legacy view can help illuminate the purpose of the rule in days past.
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I've been saying this since I was in Jr ROTC in high school; in 20 years across military, government, private sector, and academia, I've yet to see it proven false.
"Age, time in service, and rank do not determine maturity, intellect, or competence."
Just because you've done something for a long time and/or are in a position of power does not make what you say correct. I've met high schoolers who have been more mature and competent than folks in their 60s.
To me, how long you've been playing RPGs has much less significance than what you say and how you act. I've met gamers much younger than me who have shown me to be wrong in very mature ways, and I've had gamers older than me throw temper tantrums because I dared to use math to show them that their argument was wrong and dared to question their authority. I've aso seen very immature younger gamers and very mature older gamers. It's all on the individual, and I have to judge each individual on their own merits rather than trust any blanket statement. It's as true in gaming as it is in every other field I've been involved in.
Well, to be honest we DO see the inverse a lot. Promotion is largely based on the number of individuals within a certain "job". Different branches do it a bit differently, so there are variations, but the basic norm is that it's easier to get promoted in the "jobs" that have higher turn over and/or are more in demand. For simplicity I'll leave it at that, and these two factors are highly relevant in where the promotion points bar is set, for that "job".
So anyone that has that job has the same bar they need to achieve and maintain in order to be promoted, but it is not related at all to any other job. So a mechanic might need 30 points, a medic 700, and a driver might need 250. This leads to a lot more young and inexperienced mechanics, and I'm just using this as an example, not literal, a lot more inexperienced mechanics than it does drivers, but the issue is that a higher rank IS SUPPOSSED TO have a better understanding of ALL aspects of military responsibilities, and it does often place individuals with less experience, knowledge, wisdom, into positions of authority based on a standard that is arguably insane.
There is also a very clear distinction between the younger members that come in right out of high school/college and the older ones that have had to actually work for a living first.
So while age, experience, and wisdom/intelligence are not true standards/bars to achieve, I'd choose them every single time. over the alternative.
But as far as gaming, it really sounds like the base complaint is along the lines of I know the one true way, and I don't like it when other people with different experiences doesn't agree with mine. Labelling them the elitists is a bit, . . . odd, in my mind.
The reason people list how long they have played or what their experience is because there is literally no other metric in which to measure someones ability or knowledge of the game. You can say all you want that you know every rule, but on a forum that means nothing since you have all the time you want to look up rules. When trying to decide between to opinions who would you rather listen to, the guy who has stayed with the game for over 5 editions of the game or the one who thinks that they can "fix" Pathfinder after playing it for a few years.How about you listen to the opinions and judge for yourself which one holds more merit based on their individual upsides and downsides.
Besides, the more experienced guy should be able to justify their position a lot better than the new guy. If they can't, then that is a really bad sign.
Yes and no. There are plenty of people with experience that cannot verbalize it very well.
None of this really matters and is sort of getting bent out of shape over nothing. It's the internet, where everyone has six opinions on every topic. If you don't like that someone says "back in my day we used to blah blah blah", scroll down to the next person who will have something else to say. They may not use their age or years of experience to illustrate why their idea is better/different than someone else's, but I'm sure they'll add in some other qualifier.